


The First of December

by pixelated



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Post-First War with Voldemort, References to Depression, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Remus Lupin & Lily Evans Potter Friendship, Suicidal Thoughts, Wolfstar Holiday Prompts, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27819169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixelated/pseuds/pixelated
Summary: It’s not yet snowing, but winter has wrapped itself around Remus and settled into his brittle bones like the icy touch of Death himself.Ironic, he thinks as he steps through the wrought iron gates of the cemetery.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 34
Kudos: 81





	The First of December

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Wolfstar Holiday 2020 prompt list that I made and posted on [tumblr](https://remus-john-lupin.tumblr.com/post/634951075596828672/its-come-to-my-attention-that-i-have-fireplace).
> 
> Day 1: Snowflakes

It’s not yet snowing, but winter has wrapped itself around Remus and settled into his brittle bones like the icy touch of Death himself. 

_Ironic,_ he thinks as he steps through the wrought iron gates of the cemetery.

Before, he always found a strange, unnameable pleasure in the holiday season and the sheer infectiousness of the joy emanating from everyone, young and old alike. Whenever he was feeling down, even in the warmer months, Lily used to make Remus laugh by waving her wand and releasing snow flurries atop his head. _Bits of frozen happiness,_ she called them. James and Peter would be making tiny snowballs with what she had conjured up, and Sirius would tousle the snowflakes from Remus’s curls before wrapping him up in the warmest of embraces.

Now, Remus only wishes for it to end, for everything to end, and he can’t help but fixate on the way the trees have lost their leaves and left their crooked black branches exposed like charred skeletal remains, and the way the animals have hidden themselves within burrows in the muddied ground like tiny little graves, and how everything is as silent as a tomb.

There is no life here. Everything is dead. Only Remus’s frosty heart remains.

He pulls his cloak tighter around himself, nestles deeper into his thick, woolly, muffler, and attempts to brush it away, but nothing in the past month has ever managed to make this miserable feeling leave him—not the steaming cups of peppermint hot chocolate he always enjoyed this time of year, nor cozying up beside the fireplace with a good book. He wonders what the point of it all is without anyone at all to share it with.

It’s the first of December now, and it was only one month ago to the very day when his entire world had been yanked out from beneath his sure and steady feet and his still beating heart ripped from the dark crevice of his chest—receiving the bad news by owl from Dumbledore, as if he was nothing more than an afterthought, that his best friends were all dead, murdered, and the one person he’s ever truly been in love with holding the blame for it all.

The only thought that Remus takes any kind of solace in is that perhaps their souls didn’t have to wait long before ascending to heaven, or to… whatever may lie beyond this mortal coil. The first of November was All Saints Day, and nobody had been more pure-hearted than James and Lily Potter. They’re martyrs now—not saints of the Church, but of the War.

Remus isn’t a religious man, has never been by any measure, but lately he has been praying, has knelt down at the foot of his bed every night since _that_ night like a boy just to have someone, perhaps whomever it is that created this cruel world, listen to his tearful sobbing. There’s no one else to talk to, anyway. His mother (God rest her soul as well) had been raised Catholic, and if there is any chance at all that any of the stories from her Holy Book could be true, he hopes it’s that one. That James and Lily are somewhere up there at peace, looking down at him. Looking out for him in some kind of way.

It’s a somewhat comforting thought, though it is fleeting.

Right now, he is looking down at them instead, but he nearly wishes he could lie here where they do. Lily and James didn’t deserve this. They were too kind, too loved, too gifted, their futures bright and laid out before them to go out and change the world for the better. James was training to be an Auror before the war really began, and Lily to be a Healer. The entirety of the Wizarding World is still grieving for these two, so young when they were struck down by the darkest magic imaginable, supposedly betrayed by the one person whom they trusted the most, leaving their son orphaned and alone. One doesn’t even need to hear the details to know it’s a tragedy.

Clutching a small bouquet of red and white chrysanthemums, Remus crouches upon the wet ground at the foot of the Potters’ side-by-side plots with a defeated sigh and doesn’t mind that the biting air makes his bones creak as if he were three times his age when he stoops down or how the cold, muddy rain puddle soaks into the knees of his tattered and patched brown plaid trousers as he divides the blooms he bought at a flower shop with his few remaining coins between both of their graves with his shaking mittened hands.

“I am so sorry,” he says to both of his dead friends out loud, completely unconcerned if he sounds like a proper madman speaking with ghosts to any innocent passers-by, but this is a cemetery after all, so perhaps he isn’t as mad as he thinks himself to be. “Sorry I haven’t visited until now. But know that I miss you both so much, and saying goodbye to you is the most difficult and gut wrenching thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Morbidly, he wonders if James is wearing his glasses inside his casket, wonders If Lily has her fingernails painted her signature scarlet like she always did in life, wonders if they’re dressed as elegantly as they were on their wedding day two years ago, and how decayed their bodies could possibly be in this bitter cold.

He wipes a stray tear from his cheek and sniffs, shifting his gaze to look up toward the grey sky. 

“I never in my most horrible nightmares imagined I’d ever be without you. Without Harry. Without Peter. Without Sirius. And maybe I’m an idiot for it, but I still can’t accept that he did this. He loved you as much as I do, I know he did. I know he _does.”_

Remus shakes his head a bit, letting out a warm puff of air from between his lips as he rises back to his feet.

“I wish you could give me some sort of sign that I should continue trying. That Sirius is truly innocent, that I should fight to get him out and get Harry back. Tell me I’m right. Please, Lily. James. Let me know somehow, some way.”

With a choking sob, Remus brushes another tear away and tries his hardest not to blatantly weep as he stands there alone in the cemetery. It’s only when a few snowflakes fall on his head from above that his tears cease and he cracks a hint of a smile.

It’s the first snow of the season.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](https://remus-john-lupin.tumblr.com/)! 💙


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